Today in History

1783: Representatives of the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolutionary War.

1923: The United States and Mexico resumed diplomatic relations.

1939: Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland; in a radio address, Britain’s King George VI said, “With God’s help, we shall prevail.” The same day, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner SS Athenia some 250 miles off the Irish coast, killing more than 100 out of the 1,400 or so people on board.

1951: The television soap opera “Search for Tomorrow” made its debut on CBS.

1976: America’s Viking 2 lander touched down on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.

1994: China and Russia proclaimed an end to any lingering hostilities, pledging they would no longer target nuclear missiles or use force against each other.

2004: A three-day hostage siege at a school in Beslan, Russia, ended in bloody chaos after Chechen militants set off bombs as Russian commandos stormed the building; more than 330 people, over half of them children, were killed.

2013: Ariel Castro, who’d held three women captive in his Cleveland home for nearly a decade before one escaped and alerted authorities, was found hanged in his prison cell, a suicide.